New Year: My Best Advice In Regards To Audio is...

[gmgraves]

Don't spend money on snake oil.

 

 

Now, if only everyone could agree on what constitutes snake oil and what constitutes a real improvement to one's system. Of course, so many audio companies rely on this lack of consensus for their livelihoods, that if we did all agree, they'd go under!

[gmgraves]

Well? Tell us what your best advice is!

 

Please restrict your advice to something at least tangentially connected to the Audio Hobby, and of course, no sniping at other folks. Thanks

-Paul

 

Just keep in mind that the music is what's important, not perennially chasing one's tail on the upgrade merry-go-round. Be content with a decent system and listen to the music, not the system.

[gmgraves]

1. Enjoy listening to music.

 

2. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

Also, get out and enjoy some live music!

 

 

I like the last one, especially. Recently I decided to go to a local symphony orchestra concert as it's been a while since I'd heard any live music. First of all, the ticket prices gave me a heart attack: $48 for the cheap seats to $165 for the best seats - and this is for one performance (and they wonder why concert attendance has fallen-off in many cities)!

 

Secondly, I've heard high-school bands play better (and these are supposed to be professional musicians). They were terrible. Not as bad as the Richmond Virginia Symphony concert that I attended in the late 1980's while visiting my parents (I walked out of that one), but still, appallingly bad! Scandalous!

[gmgraves]

See, just proof live music shouldn't be the standard. These same musicians recorded 16 measures at a time, getting to repeat mistakes, and having it all straightened out in editing will sound just wonderful. Then the recording costs less than even the cheap seats. While being superior.

 

Please note appropriate level of sarcasm in my post.

 

You are right, performance-wise, sometimes. But then I hear a live broadcast of the Boston Symphony, on the Internet, and there is nothing like it. But then even with less than stellar performances, no recording, no broadcast, no matter how good or bad, will ever sound like live acoustic music, played in a real space. And that's the real point, isn't it?

[gmgraves]

Obviously the symphony in your town is not to your liking. My experience is vastly different. Cincinnati has an outstanding symphony. The high school youth orchestra is itself outstanding. Our Music Hall has outstanding acoustics, and my main measure of comparison was Boston during the Seiji Ozawa era. That said I seek out and attend the small performances often free or $20 or $40. I most enjoy live music in small settings. Where we have chosen to live has been blessed with active art scenes. Rather than being too critical, and I can assure you that I've also sat through my share of 3 and 4 year old first recitals, grade, middle and high school orchestras/bands as well as 'experimental' banging on pots and pans by adults in Switzerland etc., rather than being too critical you should seek out and support good music wherever it may be. That's my New Years advice.

 

Cincinnati has always had a good symphony orchestra, so has Cleveland (Something about Ohio-ans and music!). Look at the conductors that Cincinnati has had over the years: Leopold Stokowski, Fritz Reiner, Eugene Goosens, Walter Susskind, and Eric Kunzel, to name a few. The Cincinnati Symphony is a major US Orchestra, and has been for generations. That's nice, but there are a number of lesser US Symphonies and Philharmonics who, none-the-less, play very well, and put on concerts that truly satisfy and are worth attending and supporting. For many years I was the recording and broadcasting engineer for the San Jose (CA) Symphony under the late Maestro Georg Cleve. They never had a recording contract, and they weren't world-renowned, but they played well, made great music and had many famous guest artists. I recorded people like Aaron Copland conducting his own works, The world premiere of Virgil Thompson's Requiem Mass, Phillippe Entremont (Piano), Pierre Fournier (Cello), Frederica Von Staadt (Soprano), Eric Stoltzman (clarinet), Lou Harrison and Alan Hovhaness conducting their own works, etc. My recording of Phillippe Entremont playing Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto, is not only the best performance of that work I've ever heard, it's also the best recording of the work I've ever heard - if I do say-so myself

 

It's too bad that Reno's symphony is so poor. They have a magnificent and fairly new hall in which to perform, and it is acoustically excellent. Not every city in the country with a symphony orchestra can have a great one like Cincinnati, and Kansas City MO, though. Super-rich Marin County has a symphony that plays in a concert hall designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright and company; it doesn't help!

 

Look, I agree with you about being too critical, I can take an occasional clinker or two in a live concert, but when a supposedly professional (as in paid to play and unionized) ensemble cannot start and stop together, are able to hit the right notes only occasionally and play off-key perennially, it's like listening to a recording that's full of wow and flutter and is off-speed. There's no pleasure in it for me, especially at ~$50 a seat and up!

[gmgraves]

Sorry you had a bad experience.

 

This year we saw The Rolling Stones in a stadium, Stevie Wonder in an arena, bands like Vintage Trouble in a smallish, almost acoustically perfect local theater venue. Oh, and Leon Russell at an outdoor venue in a motorcycle dealer's covered parking lot.

 

A good time was had by all.

 

That's nice, I'm glad you enjoyed them, but what that has to do getting out and listening to live, un-amplified music or attending a symphony orchestra concert where the supposedly professional musicians play like the "Portsmouth Sinfonia"* while charging an arm and a leg for tickets, I don't know.

 

*The Portsmouth Sinfonia was an orchestra founded by a group of students at the Portsmouth School of Art in England, in 1970. The Sinfonia had an unusual entrance requirement, in that each player had to be either a non-musician or, if a musician, play an instrument that was entirely new to them. Among the founding members was one of their teachers, English composer Gavin Bryars. The orchestra started as a one-off, tongue-in-cheek performance art ensemble but became a cultural phenomenon over the following ten years, with concerts, record albums, a film and a hit single. They last performed publicly in 1979.

[gmgraves]

Where do you get a "zerostat"? 'cause I've been wasting a whole bunch of time sitting in my listening chair, using my laptop to remote control my music, browsing, posting, sipping, etc. when all this time I could have been discovering new Physics! I'm waay behind the 8 ball, so will need 2 zerostats at least? good source? I'm all in ...

 

priceless.

 

 

Audio Advisor sells the Milty Zerostat for about $50. For vinyl records they are very useful!

[gmgraves]

Is it available?

 

 

Like I said, the San Jose Symphony never had a recording contract, so my recordings are the property of the symphony itself. I have a DAT dub of the 1/2-track, 15 ips master tape, but I do NOT have the master and I do not own rights to either the master or any dubs of the master. Legally, I probably shouldn't even have those dubs, but the symphony organization knew I have them and have never said anything. So, the answer to your question is, unfortunately, no. And I must say, I don't remember if that particular concert was broadcast or not (some were, some weren't). If it was, there might be someone out there with an air-check of the program recorded off of the radio, and of course, legally, nothing can be done about those copies.

[gmgraves]

Ok, sorry. We appear to have have different tastes in music. I like all kinds of music, although I admit I haven't been to a symphony concert in many years and haven't played in one since my younger days many years before.

 

Guess I just misunderstood your original remark as being critical of live music in general. I love it. Loud, raunchy, whatever. Different strokes and all that. Cheers!

 

The "different taste in music" to which you allude is really neither here nor there. My comments were about the musicianship of a symphony orchestra, whose concerts I attend to hear live, un-amplified acoustical instruments playing in a real venue. And when I don't get what I went to the concert to hear, why, I get a little annoyed! In fact, I have walked out of symphony orchestra concerts (demanding a refund) when I enter the concert hall and see "sound reinforcement" equipment set up. It's not needed, for one thing, and for another, I usually tell the concert hall management when I encounter sound reinforcement, that I came to hear real musicians playing, not somebody's P.A. system, and that I have much better equipment at home and if I wanted to listen to speakers, I could have put on a recording of whatever was being played that evening and listened from the comfort of my own easy chair!

 

I too have a much wider musical taste than just classical. I like much post WWII jazz, big band music, folk, latin jazz (including Bossa-Nova), bluegrass, Sinatra, and other late 20th century pop singers such as Shirley Bassey, Dinah Washington et-al. It's just that I don't hold these other types of music (live or recorded) to the same standards that I hold an expensive live symphony concert.

[gmgraves]

Just wondering. It sounds like the sort of thing that might have ended up in the hands of High Definition Tape Transfers.

 

Yes, they could have. The masters were Dolby-A encoded, and sound quite spectacular (I wonder where they are now; probably sitting in someone's moldy garage or basement!). They were all recorded with a pair of Sony C-37Ps on a stereo T-bar hanging about 10 ft over, and about 15 ft behind the conductor's head with AKG C414s as accent mikes (when needed). But I always thought that the DAT dubs sounded just as good as the masters, and the CDs burned from those DATs almost as good. Certainly the CDs sounded better than anything one could buy commercially. I know 24/96 would have been really something as well, but due to the limitations of magnetic analog tape, probably actually more than a little overkill so HD analog tape transfers would probably be as close as possible to perfect copies.

[gmgraves]

I've enjoyed a few loud, raunchy rock concerts myself in my time, but let's face it, most of the joy is in the atmosphere generated by the artist and the crowd. Music that's been piped through a mike and out huge speakers is hardly "live" in the listening sense. You'll very likely get a better listening experience from cranking up the same music on your home hifi. Orchestral music, along with the odd intimate jazz or folk club and street musicians, is the only source of truly "live" (ie unamplified) music these days.

 

Amen to that, Brother!

[gmgraves]

I would recommend more people to consider stand mount speakers.

Specially if you have a smaller listening room.

 

Floor standing speakers have issues when it comes to clean bass delivery.

Bad/poor bass can eat into your mids and muddy the sound a bit.

Setup a stand mount speaker well and you might be surprised by the results.

 

 

Modern small cone speakers can sound excellent - it's amazing, really. I've never been a fan of cone speakers, but a pair of small, stand-mounted speakers can provide surprising amounts of bass and they usually image very well with a very precise, wide and deep soundstage presentation.

 

Add a pair of powered subs and you can have a system that rivals (and in some ways even surpass) larger systems. Of course, it goes without saying, that this approach works best in smallish rooms.

[gmgraves]

Hhahaha.. i was laughing in this comment why is snake oil in this topic.

 

 

If I understand you correctly, you are asking why is snake oil mentioned in this thread? The answer is that a lot of audiophiles actually believe that "snake oil" makes their system sound better and a lot of it is expensive, hence the caveat to avoid spending money on it.

 

 

* audio snake oil is defined as additions to one's systems with dubious scientific or engineering provenance. Examples, ostensibly include: Green ink pens for CDs, cryogenically treated digital clocks plugged into the same outlet as your stereo system, Myrtlewood blocks placed on top of components to make then "sound better", speaker cable lifts, free-form wooden music-stand-like "mobiles" scattered around the room to "break-up standing waves", and, arguably, $10,000/meter interconnects between components. Just keep in mind that one person's "snake-oil" can be another person's "sonic breakthrough".

[gmgraves]

My current favorite is, well, I am not sure what to call these without using language unbecoming a gentlemen:

 

Brilliant Pebbles Advanced Audio Video Tweak

 

 

You know, I've got to give the person who came-up with this one credit. He is selling stream-polished pebbles, something that costs him, ostensibly, nothing, for from $39 to $160 (depending on size) and such is the disease "audiophilia nervosa" that many people will buy into this and swear that these pebbles have made all the difference in the sound of their system! Why, just imagine what a concert hall full of these pebbles would do for the sound of a full symphony orchestra! I wish I'd thought of it.

 

 

There's no doubt that this will work! This solution will probably make a bigger improvement than purchasing a new mega-buck amplifier! The way it works is that by Scotch-taping the pebbles to the interconnects, the pebbles realign and control the flow of electrons through the wire in the same way that these same pebbles control the flow of water in the stream bed from which they came. A very sound scientific principle!

[gmgraves]

I also have to hand it to him, one has to admire the audacity. I want to attend that concert, however I would be slightly anxious if I also did not Scotch-tape said pebbles all over my body (and I do mean all of it ) in addition to whatever the hall was doing.

 

Also, what effect does using different kinds of tape have? Does "military grade" tape from the old Soviet empire improve things over, say cheap tape from Indonesia?

 

Yeah, I wondered that too. It looks like Scotch brand, as the tape looks somewhat "frosty", and I think that only Scotch brand has that characteristic. BTW, be careful when removing the tape from certain portions of the male anatomy, it can really hurt!

[gmgraves]

Does it have to be scotch tape? What about masking tape? Maybe sellotape would sound better?

 

 

I dunno, you know how many of these tweaks are. You have to follow protocol exactly, or they don't work. I'll bet that the tape is very important. People who report poor results with their pebbles probably are using the wrong tape. I wouldn't risk it!

 

I wonder if the bags of pebbles are polarized. I.E. do they have to be oriented in the signal flow just as they were oriented in the stream from which they came in order to affect the SQ of one's system.

[gmgraves]

First hand experience?

 

 

Common sense!

[gmgraves]

I have to wonder why this thread is devolving into yet another "snake oil" assessment one? I would hope that others might have some actual advice, and not feel the need to pick on individual silly ideas. And please I am not suggesting for one moment that these ideas work, but that it might be more productive to quit bitching about things that don't...

 

 

The thread hasn't devolved, we're just having a little fun with the idea of "audio pebbles". There's nothing serious going on here about this subject, and I don't see where anyone is "bitching" about anything.

[gmgraves]

Nah, not generic enough. How about good old sticky back plastic!

 

Couldn't resist, apologies to 4est.

 

 

Or that really old fashioned "friction tape". That woven black cloth tape from the 1930's that was tacky and wouldn't stick to anything except itself!

[gmgraves]

No worries, I am all for some levity, I am just weary of all of the preaching or the extreme examples. I for one, have never heard of an individual that uses those pebbles even though I have seen the Audiogon ads.

 

 

I'm not aware that anybody's "preaching", here, 4est.

[gmgraves]

No worries, I am all for some levity, I am just weary of all of the preaching or the extreme examples. I for one, have never heard of an individual that uses those pebbles even though I have seen the Audiogon ads.

 

Frankly, I hope that nobody is gullible enough to actually purchase those pebbles, but I'm sure some have.